Pages

Working draft - Players and priorities in the Kurukshetra

Players and Priorities in
the Kurukshetra

By Rajiv Malhotra

While 25 years ago I routinely
faced serious resistance from our community when I discussed how our discourse
is dominated by outsiders, today there is enough awareness of this problem.
Despite this awareness, we have not yet achieved much by way of actually
changing the discourse in the mainstream. One of the reasons is that too often
our opinion leaders do not start with a clear statement of our goals in the
mainstream; they tend to jump ahead to opine or start taking actions that might
not be well thought through.

In this brief note, I want
to focus one issue one: the relationship between deep structures and
superficial discourse. From this follows my analysis of the types of players who
are active and what prevents better coordination among ourselves.

Can superficial involvement topple the deep structures?

There
are many levels and sub-levels of discourse, but for my purpose here I will discuss
the two extremes (namely, the deep level and the superficial level). My thesis
is succinctly stated below.

While mainstream
media and pop culture tend to discuss things superficially, there lies a
deep level of discourse that requires more specialized expertise to
engage. This is where the intellectual power resides. One must drill down
to this level to really know what is going on that matters.

Our opponents have
worked hard at the deep level for the past several generations. They have
systematically established their ideologies, assumptions, loyal players,
and the means of knowledge production and distribution. Often, they have
not only conceded the superficial level to us as a way to make us happy
and complicit, they have also actively helped us at the surface level to
seem like allies. By now, very few among us are aware of what goes on at
the deep level, and fewer still are concerned about this with enough
passion and fearlessness to be able to make any impact. Most of us are
negotiating their place within the deep structure controlled by others.

We are
micro-optimizing our position in the sense of short sighted improvements
and benefits for a few. We are sacrificing the marco situation as a
result. We have been doing this for many centuries. First it was the
Muslims in control, then the Europeans, and now the Americans.

Over the past 25
years, there has been a groundswell improvement of public awareness of
this predicament. However, not much has been achieved in the deep levels
where the structures remain hostile to our civilization. We are fighting
superficial battles even after becoming aware of the serious predicament
we face.

The deep structures
cannot be disrupted by using superficial methods and superficially trained
minds. This is where the crux of my issue lies.

The deep level of work
required is inherently tough, multi-disciplinary, risky, and there is no
quick victory or personal gratification in the conventional sense. In
other words, it is thankless work demanding high sacrifice and with high
personal risks.

Given the enormity of
the deep level challenges, we need multiple experts each specializing in
different kinds of issues. There is room for plenty of leadership without
tripping over each other or trying to bring each other down. However, we
lack such broad vision among many of the leaders. Why?

There is too much
opportunism, and this is because the easy/quick superficial levels are
more enticing, and because most of our people reward the superficial work.
It is a quick way ahead for many. This means there is neglect of the deeper
levels, and to much glorification and limelight for superficial work. Many
are turning the deep discourse into superficial level for quick fame. Who
will do the heavy lifting then?

My advice to
individuals wanting to be deeply involved is to pick a movement and
dedicate yourself to it.

Match your work with your
svadharma, and turn that into your yajna.

But
first, I will give a simple overview of the different types of players in the
battlefield. Then was can find ways to organize ourselves better to achieve the
goal of toppling the deep structures and discourse that we have inherited from
the past.

Categories of players

The
simple view most of us have is that there are just two kinds of players in the
intellectual battlefield, our home team and our opponents. My movement has been
to fight those opponents who are the thought leaders, and not waste time
fighting the ordinary ones. I choose those opponents where I can make a game
changing impact, and especially where others on our ideological side have not
taken up the fight yet, or at least nobody has done the heavy lifting required
to spark such a fight. I am now doing this kind of pioneering work with
Pollock, and I have earlier started similar movements against other heavy
weights like Wendy Doniger.

Individuals
on my home team are those supporting my strategy, identification of targets,
plans and methods. In other words, they must be team players and must have
enough tapasya and competence to be useful in pragmatic ways.

However,
another major category of players is of those who are not on my home team, who
are other pro-dharma leaders aligned with our ideals and fighting for dharma on
their own. For example, I have great respect for leaders of dharma such as Dr.
Subramanian Swamy and Baba Ramdev, and intellectuals like S. Gurumurthy, Madhu
Kishwar and Koenraad Elst, who have each achieved their own independent impact
in a substantial way. The diagram below shows these three types of players.

The
point to appreciate is that these other dharmic forces (type 3) act
independently of my work; but we appreciate each other’s work, try to stay in
touch privately and help each other when we can. One can use the analogy of
coalition partners – separate identity and organizations, but aligned
strategically.

Focus: the type 4 nuisance

I
wish life in the kurukshetra was this simple. Unfortunately, much of my energy
is wasted on a fourth category of persons. The reason form writing this paper
is to draw attention to this group. The other categories are mentioned very
briefly just to locate the type 4 group and discuss them in detail.

This
is a very large set of individuals acting in disruptive ways while thinking
they are helping our cause. To put it simply, these are persons who are
unwilling to fit into my home team (type 2) and are not competent enough or
effective enough to have become high-impact players in their own right (type
3). I want to discuss this type 4 individual in detail. The diagram that
follows shows all four categories I have introduced thus far.

The
problem with such misfits can be understood by first appreciating the
importance of any enterprise having a common strategic plan. A master chef has
a well-developed recipe he wants to make with the help of others, but he cannot
afford to allow helpers who have their own recipes no matter how good. Imagine
that a chief town planner has developed the master architecture for a major
project, complete with standards, methods, priorities and so forth. Then
imagine some workers join who don’t want to follow these plans but have their
own rival or conflicting ideas. Yet they do not want to go away and take
responsibility for developing their own separate town somewhere else. They want
to work here but not follow the narrative that has been put in place to guide
the project. Any leader would find this behavior an obstruction and look for a
way to get rid of such people. The same can be said for someone who joins a
surgical team for a complex surgery, but who revolts in the middle of the
surgery against the plan being carried out by the chief surgeon. A military
commander would not tolerate some on his team that argues in the middle of
battle and demands his own approach to battle be carried out instead. These are
all examples we learn in the corporate world as team builders and leaders.

There
is a time for brainstorming to make decisions, and a time to comply with the
team’s playbook once that is set. Too often, I find that we Indians lack this
kind of team dynamics and there tends to be internal fighting when the focus
ought to be to unite against the opponents out there.

In
my career as an entrepreneur, I used to offer such rebellious but otherwise
intelligent individuals a chance to lead their own project, one in which they
would be the boss. Many did take up such challenges and performed very well.
They would be classified as type 3 in the above diagram – i.e. those cut out to
be their own autonomous leaders. But many such rebellious individuals were not
capable to lead their own ventures, because they lacked the necessary strategic
thinking, leadership experience and risk taking. They were not cut out to take
responsibility and be accountable for producing the results expected. Nor would
they follow the lead of someone else. Such team misfits have to be removed
after some attempts have been made to try and work with them. This becomes
important for the sake of the health of the overall enterprise.

Many
such individuals turn out to be opportunists who sneak in under the guise of
wanting to help. But they want to quickly pick up some ideas or resources, and
then go away to try their own mobilization. Some of them have the audacity of
demanding that I should work for them. They try to impose their own
scheme/narrative of how to do things and constantly argue against the approach
I have developed over many years and one that works for me. After internal
bickering which is unproductive, one has to ask them to leave us alone. This
can turn into acrimony as the person feels insulted that their capabilities
were rejected. Indians must learn more team work and accept that often a good
individual worker might be a bad team member. For the sake of team performance,
it become better to remove the individual. Anyone who has run complex projects
knows what I am talking about.

Once
such a relationship has become antagonistic, there is a range of potential
outcomes possible. One hopes the person peacefully goes away. We can be friends
from a distance, leaving each other alone. But too often the disgruntled person
become a hijacker because by now he knows too many secrets. I have had individuals try to blackmail me
with warning that they will join my enemies. Many indeed have done so. Some
persons vacillate between playing a positive role in one of my teams and
turning toxic when we reject his or her ideas.

At
some stage, one must recognize that the relationship cannot be salvaged and it
becomes a matter of damage control. I see them as pests or hecklers that I must
try to contain somehow. The diagram below has many signature qualities listed
in bullet points under type 4. This might seem strange to readers who are
inexperienced in this kind of work, because they assume that Hindus would come
to seva with a spirit of dedication and surrender of the ego. In practice, this
is not how it works.

In
the recent clash with R. Ganesh, several type 4 individuals showed their true
colors. I have this side of them for many years. Some are newcomers who tried
marching in and demanding to take things over, and when politely asked to leave
us alone, they turned hostile. I am not naming persons here, but if you look at
the archives on some Facebook and others discussions you will find such
patterns of behavior.

As
for R. Ganesh himself, I never expected that he would want to work in my home
team following our grand strategy. But it would have been nice if he had carved
a niche in the kurukshetra and become a responsible leader of type 3. We could
be friends from a distance while sympathizing and morally supporting each
other. A sign of slavery of a defeated people is this silo mentality. To get
out of this we need to put lacs of our youth through corporate leadership roles
where they learn how to play roles from the big ones to the small ones, in
harmony and with the use of diverse people with specialized strengths and
weaknesses. Unfortunately, our education system does not emphasize leadership
or management or strategic thinking skills.

The
fifth type of person is someone who does not want to commit to concrete roles
in a type 2 or 3 setting, and nor is ambitious as a type 4 activist wanting to
do things his own way. Such individuals stay out of the limelight, and might do
things like retweeting or supporting from the outside once in a while. They can
be very useful because we have a large number of them and collectively they
definitely matter. We cannot count on them to do big tasks, but nor are we
concerned that they might turn toxic and destructive. Those who wish to remain
passive readers in order to learn for the sake of self-improvement belong here
as well. While many of them will remain here long term, several will migrate to
one of the other categories.

Let
me return to the challenge I posed earlier: How can we align the players and formulate
priorities to topple the deep discourse? The simplistic grid like I have
presented here, though far from perfect, allows readers to crystalize a view of
the internal politics we must deal with deftly.

Unfortunately,
many talented individuals are sitting and watching, some are splashing water to
get attention, some are trying to trip the hard working leaders out of
excitement or to get personal attention; some do this out of jealousy and
spite.

Not
only should you avoid becoming another type 4 destructive person, I suggest
that you must actively engage in fighting the type 4 persons. Just as the
body’s immune system defends it from threatening forces, so also we need help
to fight off such disruptive forces even if they are micro-optimizing and seem
to have good intentions on the surface.

Disclaimer

Opinions expressed here by bloggers here are personal and do not reflect those of their current or previous associates and employers. Comments are largely un-moderated, and neither reflect the views of, nor are endorsed, by the administrators or bloggers of this website.